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Rep. Sewell: ‘You don’t need a quid pro quo’ for an impeachment inquiry

On Sunday, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham), explained how a whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Donald Trump during a phone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky would serve as a “road map” for an impeachment inquiry.

According to Sewell, who is also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the interpretation of the dialogue on the call that the president pressured Zelensky to launch an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden crossed a “rubicon.”

“Look, it’s not because I didn’t think that there were really unpresidential behavior by this president from moment one, but because I was worried that it would get us sidetracked from other more important items for the American people,” she said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “But I do believe that we’ve crossed a Rubicon here. I do believe that this whistleblower allegation is so serious it gets to the very heart of our nation’s democracy, the integrity of our elections. And if any district understands that, it’s my district — Alabama seventh congressional district, which was the civil rights district where people died, fought, bled for the right to vote and the integrity of our elections are at question. When the president of the United States asks a foreign leader for a favor and then withholds millions of dollars of foreign aid in order to solicit interference in our election, I don’t think it gets more important than that.”

“Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan mentioned that Sewell’s Republican colleagues disputed the allegations of an implied quid pro quo, to which Sewell dismissed as a necessity for an impeachment inquiry.

“You don’t need a quid pro quo,” she said. “The reality is that the complaint speaks for itself and it corroborates the partial readout that we received earlier in the week. So I think that, you know, none of us come to Congress to try and impeach the president. I know the people elected me to go to Congress to lower prescription drug prices for them, to make sure that we have an equal, level playing field when it comes to education. But I think that we find ourselves at a very sombering moment in American history and we can either choose to live by the oath that we took, which is to uphold this Constitution and get to the bottom of what’s going on. We need to understand what the speaker has done is initiated an inquiry — an inquiry. And, obviously, the road map is the complaint. It raises lots of concerns as to the extent of this president’s portrayal, and we need to get to the bottom of that, and we need to do so in a deliberate manner.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.

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